The end of 2020 is almost here and we made it! And we’ve learned some pretty significant lessons this year that can be carried over to put us in a better position to face the new unknowns of next year. I know everyone has been affected by this in different ways, but I think most people can agree that it made our senses grow sharper, as Yeats says above. It feels a little like the idea that when we lose one sense, the others become more acute. So as I’ve lost the hustle and bustle of what my life used to be, I’ve been able to look around and realize the magical simple joys in life a little more.

For starters, staying at home all the time has given me a much better appreciation for my house. When made the purchase 5 years ago, I remember thinking of it as a 3-5 year starter home. This gave me a mentality of “waiting for the next house” in terms of decorating or settling. This changed pretty quickly this year when everything shut down and we were stuck inside 95% of the time. At that point I started noticing things that made the house feel temporary and started to make little changes. I hung artwork on the walls in our home office. I rearranged things in our bedroom to help with the cluttered feel. I started purging things that weren’t sparking joy. And then in the midst of that, I quit my job. Which, let’s be real, puts buying a new house much further down the road at this point. But I had already started making this one feel more permanent. And it made that loss of “future house” feel less like a loss and more like an opportunity to enjoy this home for longer.

I’d say the second thing that has brought me joy this year is our little menagerie. If I haven’t mentioned it before, my husband and I have a dog, two cats, a ball python, a leopard gecko, and five chickens. I have always loved our furry, fluffy, and scaley animals, but I’ve never spent as much time with them as I have this year. In the absence of co-workers, I chat with my cat Portia as she snuggles in my lap. And her brother Buzz always tries to make an appearance when I’m on video chats. And on nice days I work with the window open and hear the chickens clucking away in the backyard. As for Bette Davis, the gecko, and Shep, the python, I am now the primary one to feed them every week! These sweet animals have given me much needed companionship and variety in an otherwise lonely and monotonous year.

Third, the relationships in my life have brought me so much joy this year. I’m a textbook introvert, I will always opt for being by myself if give the choice. A full week in a highly populated office setting would absolutely wear me out. But being forced to be apart from people I care about gave me a new found appreciation for the people in my life. Tyler and I navigated the change and figured out a balance that worked for us being in the house together full time. I cherish every moment I get to spend with my parents. And with Zoom, Google Meet, FaceTime…I’ve had more good conversations with friends near and far than I ever have! Whereas I used to rely solely on text to reach out to people, because talking seemed to exhausting, I now will schedule a video call just to say hi. I’ve been diligent in maintaining physical distance with people…but I wouldn’t say it’s been social distance. I feel closer to those in my social circle after this year.

So yes, it was a hard year. And I’m not trying to sugarcoat anything that happened over the past 10 months. But my goal for the end of this year is to try and focus on those joyful moments and memories as much as possible. History will ensure we remember the difficult times we endured this year, but it’s up to us to remember the happy and magical things in our lives.

For the past several weeks I’ve walked through the five steps I think are key for setting goals.

• Step 1 – A Little Self-Reflection: Where are you right now and how did you get here?
• Step 2 – Define Your Motivation: What is your deep down motivation to make a change?
• Step 3 – Write Your Goal: Craft your goal using SMART criteria
• Step 4 – Action Planning: What practical steps to you need to take to be successful?
• Step 5 – Contingencies: What obstacles might get in your way of success and how can you prepare to overcome them?

But what if you have a huge goal in mind that doesn’t quite breakdown very well into these steps? Should you just abandon those Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs) and only go after smaller changes? Absolutely not!

The last company I worked for had a great way of thinking about big goals vs smaller ones. Every year teams would go through the process of writing their multi-year objectives, or re-evaluating what was written the previous year. These multi-year goals were always written as stretch goals and as such, would take more than one calendar year to accomplish. Next these big goals would be broken down into yearly goals and then further broken into quarterly action plans. Did this take a lot of time? Sure did. But it was worth the effort. Everything was designed so that it all worked together within the overarching corporate strategy. Since you are just one person, the process may not need to be quite so complex. But I think the same principles can apply.

BHAGs can be written in a less-detailed and more broad overarching way. While I encourage goals to be detailed and specific, a BHAG might be something more like “Buy a house.” I think it still helps to be time-bound, but it can be more vague. “Buy a house in the next 3-5 years.”

Now, there are a lot of things that need to happen between now and buying a house. Maybe you need to pay off that credit card debt and build up your credit score, or you want to save more towards a substantial down payment. Or you need to figure out your long-term career goals so you know where you want to settle down. Each of these then can become a SMART goal with an action plan. Figure out what you need to do right now, walk through your goal-setting process, and then next year start again with self-reflection in the context of your BHAG. What were you able to accomplish? What obstacles got in the way? Was your goal the right size or was it too easy? Too difficult? Then make your next set of goals to keep you on track towards buying a house in 2-4 years!

Big goals can be scary and daunting. So instead of focusing on the big hairy thing at the end of the road, just focus on taking the next right step.

So hopefully you’ve finished your holiday gift shopping by now. But if you haven’t, I have a few ideas for last minute gifts that are actually meaningful…and don’t involve kidnapping!

• Homemade meal delivery: Commit to making 1 homemade meal per month and delivering it to your friends doorstep. Either schedule the day ahead of time or plan to make something freezer friendly that they can heat up after a busy day.
• Houseplants: I really think anyone would be happy to get a plant as a gift! If you aren’t sure if the gift recipient has a green thumb, opt for something like a succulent, snake plant, or pothos which are all pretty low maintenance.
• Gift cards: A lot of people see gift cards as impersonal, but I think matching the right gift card to the right person can be a great gift. For example, if someone I know loves makeup and skincare I wouldn’t try to pick something out for them, I would get them a Sephora or Ulta gift card so they could pick exactly what they want. I remember being a kid who loved reading and a bookstore gift card was like gold to me. The option to wander through the store and pick exactly what I wanted to read was both an experience and a gift.
• Build your own gift basket: Pancake mix, coffee, maple syrup, a fun spatula in a mixing bowl for a breakfast themed gift basket. Or make a game night basket with microwave popcorn, hot chocolate, a cozy blanket and a board game.
• Fancy salt or spices: As someone who loves cooking, I can’t tell you how much I love getting fancy ingredients as gifts. I’ve gotten spice kits from Penzey’s or flavored salts. And I’ve used every last bit of them!

Things I don’t recommend unless you know the person well:

• Alcohol: The holidays can be an especially difficult time for people who don’t drink as indulging becomes the norm. And because you can’t always be sure of the internal battles people are facing, best to avoid this potential landmine.
• Perishable food: It’s the holidays, people are likely going to have limited space in their fridges and freezers. Try not to gift something that will just end up being a burden. If there’s a really great frozen treat you want to share…consider sending a gift card for the amount and a picture of the treat. Then they can order it when it works best for them.
• Public experiences: This year everyone has different comfort levels about going out into the world. Any other year I’d say gifting experiences is a great idea, but don’t give someone a membership to a museum if you don’t know that they’ll feel comfortable using it in the first half of 2021.
• Home decor items: Home decor is a super personal thing for most people. Even if we find something that we know would go perfectly in someone’s home…they might already have it exactly how they want it. And then they might feel guilty for not displaying the item you gave. Or worse, think that they have to bring it out every time you come over!
• A bunch of little things: Sometimes when we can’t think of a gift, we find ourselves in the bargain section of Target picking out a bunch of little things just so we have something to give. I think most adults would rather not get more stuff that they have to find room for in their homes. But that could just be me!

Even when we carefully craft action plans, things will come up that threaten to derail our progress. But I’d argue an action plan is still worth the effort AND we can further shrink the likelihood of failure by thinking through potential obstacles and contingencies. The way I differentiate this from writing your action plan is that your action plan should outline the things you know you will need to do to succeed. The contingency plan should only address things that might impede you. So while obstacles are inevitable, we don’t know exactly what we will face in a given year.

The way I like to go about this is to write out If/Then statements. The first part of this exercise is really fun for all my worst-case-scenario thinkers out there. In the “If” column write out everything that could go wrong or prevent you from accomplishing your goal. Be realistic for most of these, but also feel free to get outlandish. I’ll tell you…I did this exercise at the beginning of 2020 with a group of women and not a single one wrote “If a global pandemic shuts everything down…” so I will no longer criticize someone for using their imagination!

Once you have your obstacles written down, take time to go back through each one and write the “Then” part of your statement. For example, my goal is to finish writing 20,000 words in the next few weeks. So I might write “If my computer breaks and I can’t afford a new one, then I’ll write with pen and paper.” Or “If I break all my fingers at once, then I’ll use my voice memos to capture my ideas.”

Let’s revisit the goal of getting out of debt.

• If I lose my job, then we will re-evaluate our budget and savings goals to prioritize credit card payments.
• If my partner doesn’t stick to the budget, then we will have a conversation to identify ways to cut down on spending, ie: a cash “allowance”.
• If we have an emergency with a huge bill come up, then we will call the hospital/gas company/insurance company to negotiate a lower bill and payment schedule to avoid putting it on the credit card.

Some of these If/Then statements might seem a little vague, but that’s okay. The idea here is to make a plan for initial next steps in case one of these obstacles arises. Solutions will be fluid and circumstantial, so it’s okay to not have every twist and turn mapped out ahead of time. What we are trying to avoid is losing all the momentum that you’ve gained along the way. Imagine if I really did break all my fingers at once. The easiest thing to do in that situation would be to completely break down and give up if all I’ve thought about is how to write. But if I start off with the small little contingency of voice memos then I might actually keep going.

It is also important to remember that you aren’t going to be able to think through every potential scenario (see: global pandemic). But if we go through the practice of identifying our If/Then statements, when something truly unexpected is thrown at us we have already exercised the skill of coming up with a solution by thinking through other pathways to success.

Next week we’ll wrap up this series by talking about those Big Hairy Audacious Goals (or BHAGs) that might not fit into this goal-setting framework.

A couple weeks ago I wrote about why holiday traditions are important to us and how this year is going to look different without some of them. I know a lot of us rely on certain traditions to get us into the holiday spirit and without them we might be feeling a little less than holly jolly right now. So I put together a list of things I’m planning to do in December to make sure things stay merry and bright!

• A festive morning beverage! I happen to LOVE eggnog lattes, so I bought a carton of eggnog and have been putting a splash in my coffee instead of creamer. If you are a tea drinker, think about switching to something with peppermint or cinnamon.
• Get winter plants for inside! Some people love to get live poinsettias to decorate, but the past several years I’ve gotten an amaryllis bulb. Watching it grow and flower brings me so much joy when everything outside is dead and dreary. (Please note: poinsettia, amaryllis, and paper whites are all toxic to pets…so be aware!)
• Put out your favorite Christmas decorations. If you aren’t quite in the mood…don’t feel like you have to put out all of your decorations right now. Pick and choose the ones that you like the most and just stick with those for now. You might decide to go back and get the rest of your decorations or you might end up keeping things small this year. Just because other people are going big doesn’t mean you have to.
• Read a Christmas book! Christmas movies are great, but they only last so long. Books can be enjoyed over several days or weeks! I found this list from The Oprah Magazine recently and there’s a few I’m going to hunt down this month, like Mr. Dickens and His Carol and Christmas in London.
• But also…watch all my favorite Christmas movies. I mean, of course I’m going to watch White Christmas and Muppet Christmas Carol and Love Actually and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and The Holiday and A Christmas Story and Elf and…I won’t keep going.
• Do a Christmas puzzle. I have been doing a lot of puzzles this year while being stuck at home. They are such a great way to keep your hands busy and also challenge your mind. I grew up in a household where Springbok Christmas puzzles reigned supreme, but recently I’ve been enjoying Galison puzzles as well.
• Wear a holiday mask. Seriously, if we are wearing them anyway why not make it festive? Throw on a candy cane mask and some jingle bell earrings for your weekly grocery run!
• Try out a new holiday recipe. Or ask your family members for their classic recipes and recreate traditional meals yourself. I’m going to try my hand at homemade eggnog this year. And maybe a bouche de noel!
• Take time for daily reflection. If advent devotionals are your thing, prioritize that time every day. Or spend time journaling about something that brings you joy. Talk about your favorite childhood holiday memories. Just do something that reminds you of what gives this season deeper meaning in your life.
• Give yourself something to look forward to. If your favorite things about this year aren’t happening (fancy work parties, school concerts, church pageants, breakfasts with Santa, traveling back home, big family dinners, etc…) put something on the calendar that you can get excited about. It could be a night that you plan to decorate gingerbread houses with your spouse or a family game night with your immediate household or a fancy meal where you dress up and drink cocktails at home. Or maybe you need something small every day…don’t underestimate a good chocolate advent calendar!

In a year where every week seems to bleed into the next and it’s hard to keep track of what day it is…making this season merry and bright might take a little extra effort. But if you make it, I think it can be as joyous as you want.

Usually people stop the goal setting process once they’ve written down their goal. You think “There! I’ve done it! And now I’ll just make it happen…” But the truth is that isn’t how these things actually work. In order to achieve your goal, you have to plan out your steps towards success. Sometimes you are able to quickly identify the steps you need to take. Other times you have to be more deliberate with your action planning.

If you want to understand the importance of action planning, think about someone who has a goal of running a marathon. They have a well written SMART goal that says “I will run the 2021 Denver Marathon in under 3½ hours.” This goal is specific, measurable, achievable (depending on the person!), relevant and time-bound. But they can’t just stop there! They’ll never get to the point of being able to run 26.2 miles in under 3½ hours without having a solid step-by-step plan in place. This is where training schedules come into play for them, as well as creating a support system for the day of the race.

The same concept should be applied to your own SMART goal, even if it isn’t running a marathon. Let’s say you want to reduce your credit card debt by 50% in the next 6 months. Your action plan should take into consideration which credit card bill you are going to tackle first, how much you will pay off each month, and what actions you need to take in your budget to ensure you have that amount available each month. Without a solid action plan to pay off the debt, it’s unlikely going to just happen.

If I take my goal of writing 20,000 words in 6 weeks, my action plan will include the following:

• I will write about 500 words per day or 3,500 words per week. (I tend to break steps down by weeks vs. days because some days I’ll write more than others. And I still want to feel successful even if I take a day off.)
• Since it takes me about an hour to write 500 words, I will set aside 1 hour per day dedicated to writing. I also know I do better getting it all out at once rather than breaking it into smaller chunks throughout the day.
• My creativity and motivation seem to be highest in the morning, so I’ll schedule my writing time before lunch.
• I will set my devices to airplane mode and do not disturb so I can focus on the tasks at hand.

These are small, actionable steps that I can take to set myself up for success. I’ve thought about how to pace myself towards my goal, what time of day is best for me, and how to minimize distractions. Your goal might have more or less action steps. It might look more like a schedule where you start off easy and work towards more difficult actions, like you would while training for a marathon. Or it might just be a way to hold yourself accountable to the daily changes you want to make. If you are looking to spend less money, you might have an action plan of only going out to eat once a week or making your coffee at home instead of buying a latte every day.

At the end of this step you should have several actionable steps written out that you can use to keep yourself accountable for tracking towards success. As your work through this you might start to ask “What happens if things get off track?” Well…we’ll talk about that next week when we look closer at anticipating obstacles and contingencies.